Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Clearly, some observers fear ordinary Americans more than they do terrorists; they fret more over how dangerously unintelligent and hateful Yanks will respond to bombings than they do over the bombings themselves.
[AND]
What this reveals is that liberal concern over Islamophobia, liberal fretting about anti-Muslim bigotry, is ironically driven by a bigotry of its own, by an deeply prejudiced view of everyday people as hateful and stupid. The anti-Islamophobia lobby poses as the implacable opponent of bigotry, yet it spreads a bigoted view of ordinary white folk as so volatile, so brimming with fury, that they are one terrorist bombing away from transforming into an anti-Muslim pogrom.

Howard Kurtz used this week's installment of Reliable Sources to bash hot talk in the wake of the Boston bombings.

Jane Hall, a frequent Kurtz guest, strikes a willfully obtuse pose so she can bash Fox News for Islamaphobia.

But I think there is a difference between endlessly linking this and saying, you know, they're hopefully having visuals that say radical Islam with these young men's pictures and talking about how they should have been shot in the boat and how the wife of one of the suspects should be imprisoned simply because she is wearing a head dress in the Muslim religion.
{AND}
My point. Wait, my point is that we don't know what happened here and, yet, there is a rush to tar all Muslims with radicalism. That's my point. I think it is, in many places, on FOX. I really think if you look at it, it's across a lot of different shows on FOX.

Hall is either a very stupid woman, always a possibility with journalism professors,, or she is deeply dishonest. There may be some who are suspicious of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow "because she is wearing a head dress in the Muslim religion". But Hall is flat wrong when she implies that Islamaphobia is the sole driver of such suspicions. Only a fool like Jane Hall or Howard Kurtz would give a pass to the woman who lived in a small apartment where her husband built bombs and plotted terror.

Similarly Hall takes Fox News's attempt to distinguish the killers from the majority of Muslims ("radical" versus "mainstream") and pretends that Fox is trying to paint all Muslim's as radical.

So is she very stupid or dishonest? Kurtz does not care. He is on another mission. He is out to re-establish the post-9/11 media consensus: be sad, not angry.

KURTZ: The coverage of the Boston bombing took a sharp turn this week as the narrative turned to the motivation of the Tsarnaev brothers and whether federal authorities had mangled the case. There was some angry talk about Muslims, as much of the media world picked side, pointed fingers and engaged in ideological sniping....
KURTZ: So, what explains the ugliness that erupted after the marathon was marred by violence?

A couple of posts by William Jacobson shed light on the political agenda of the SPLC and others who are intent on promoting the media meme that the average American is "hateful and stupid".

SPLC does not have Maher on its anti-Muslim Hate Watch list even though his statements in the video, which he has made numerous times before, seem to fit squarely within SPLC’s definition. (For the record, I don’t think Maher should be on the list, even though he would be by the SPLC definition.)
It’s not hard to guess the reason. Maher’s base is SPLC’s base. Maher is a liberal with a very large megaphone, a bigger megaphone than SPLC. Maher could do more damage to SPLC’s fundraising than SPLC could do to Maher’s career.

We can debate the rights and wrongs of restrictions on gun ownership or calls for more background checks. But the desire to use public grief about Newtown to push for passage of these measures was not rooted in any direct connection between the crime and legislation. Yet almost immediately Newtown was treated as an event with obvious political consequences. Indeed, the desire by gun rights advocates to speak of the issue outside of the context of Newtown was treated as both inherently illegitimate and morally obtuse.
But the reaction to Boston has been very different. Once it became apparent that the perpetrators were “white Americans”—in the memorable phrase employed by Salon.com—but could not be connected to the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh or any other conservative faction or cause, most liberals have taken it as their duty to squelch any effort to draw the sort of conclusions to which they had almost universally rushed when blood was shed in Newtown. Many in our chattering classes who thought it was patently obvious that the actions of a lunatic should be blamed on the weapons he employed in Connecticut seem deathly afraid of what will happen if we discuss the actual motives of the Boston terrorists.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Jed Bartlett doesn't win policy debates because of his amazing tactical skills, his overpowering arguments, or the sheer persuasiveness of his granite-faced brand of urbane folksomeness. He wins them because Aaron Sorkin is a liberal and he wants Republicans to lose on the major issues. Unfortunately for liberals, Tom Coburn and John Boehner don't have their lines faxed over from Hollywood every morning.

In a similar vein, Mother Jones finds the Tsarnaev brothers "confounding."

MoDo thinks that Washington is like an episode of West Wing. Apparently, MoJo thinks the average terrorist is a villain out of "24" or a "Die Hard" movie. This leaves them "mystified" at the brothers poor tradecraft.

If they had watched a couple of episodes of "The First 48" they would have no cause for surprise. The typical criminal is no brain surgeon. The bombers probably made fewer mistakes than your run of the mill street criminal.

That's what most terrorist are-- at least in part. Strip away the ideological motivation/justification/rationalization, and you find a street thug.

This is not to minimize the danger such terror-gangsters represent. The Mumbai attackers were no geniuses yet they killed 164 people and held a huge city hostage for three days. Terry Nichols hardly fit Hollywood's idea of a terrorist, yet he helped build a bomb that killed 168 people.

Friday, April 26, 2013

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Female High School Teacher Resigns After Being Charged With Raping Female Student. Oh, who am I kidding? These kinds of incidents only suggest a systemic problem if they happen in the Boy Scouts, or the Catholic Church. Otherwise they’re just isolated incidents, a few bad apples, waddyagonnado?

MA has extremely restrictive gun laws that can land people in hot water very quickly. If I go to MA and forget a box of range ammo in my van–or even just fired brass for reloading–I am looking at three years in a MA state prison if said state trooper pulls me over, goes through the van with a very fine comb (because HEY, GUN NUT), and finds so much as a single piece of expended brass.

I'm trying to figure out how a group of legislators decides that empty brass is a dangerous object that needs to be banned or restricted.

On Feb. 6, Corkins pleaded guilty to three felonies: committing an act of terrorism while armed, interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition (he bought the gun in Virginia), and assault with intent to kill while armed. At a sentencing hearing on April 29, he faces up to 70 years in prison.
What? You didn’t hear about this? Maybe it’s because a hate-filled activist trying to kill Christians doesn’t fit the media narrative of Christians as bigots and their opponents as Care Bears.
A key aspect of the lightly reported story is the role of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an ultra-rich “civil rights” group. Corkins told investigators that he got the idea of attacking the Family Research Council from the center’s website. He also had the address of the D.C.-based Traditional Values Coalition, another group listed on the organization’s “hate map.”

Perhaps the most worrisome thing is that the government has made the SPLC a partner in its law enforcement and counter-terrorism efforts.

It’s bad enough that the center won’t edit its “hate map” despite a correlation to actual violence, but it’s scarier that the U.S. Justice Department since the Clinton era has been using the organization as its authority to determine what constitutes a “hate group.”

On a slow day this op-ed would be Fisk-worthy. But I’m busy so I’ll just ask one question: Would the Patriot-News or any other serious paper run an op-ed which painted Muslims or gays or immigrants with such broad, vitriolic brush strokes? Note how Tucker characterizes her opponents (enemies?):

To the Patriot-News, this is the language of civil discourse and reasonable compromise.

A question of a different sort: why does the management of a failing newspaper--a paper that has already cutback to a 3 day/week publishing schedule--adopt this extreme editorial tone?

I do not doubt that in some deep blue cities this tone pleases most readers. It seems quite possible that in New York or San Francisco hysterical hoplophobic eloi far out-number serious gun owners and NRA members.

But the Patriot-News operates in a conservative region with a large gun-owning population. Why then do they choose to insult that large bloc of paying and potential customers?

More than a dozen Maryland state prison guards helped a dangerous national gang operate a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scheme from behind bars that involved cash payments, sex and access to fancy cars, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Thirteen female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders, prosecutors said. The officers were charged Tuesday in a federal racketeering indictment.
The indictment described a jailhouse seemingly out of control. Four corrections officers became pregnant by one inmate. Two of them got tattoos of the inmate’s first name, Tavon — one on her neck, the other on a wrist.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

We have here the peculiarly American way digesting Continental despair. It is nihilism with a happy ending.

That's so true is should frighten us. Philosophic despair tends toward narcissistic passivity. The American mutation produces a cheerful, energetic carelessness that can do much more evil.

Sort of like Tom and Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby:

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done, was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made....

in 1998 David Gerlernter wrote about the Unabomber in the Weekly Standard . Some of his points in "Unresolved Evil" are especially relevant given Driscoll's post and the reaction to the Boston bombing:

"What matters is our communal response to the crime. Evil is easy, good is hard, temptation is a given; therefore, a healthy society talks to itself"
"Such ritual denunciations strengthen our good inclinations and help us suppress our bad ones. We need to hear them, and hear good acts praised, too. We need to hear the crowd (hear ourselves) praising good and denouncing evil."
"Goodness is unnatural, and we need to cheer one another on"
"When a terrorist murders a man, it is a meaningless act. There are evil men in every society, and they do evil things; that's all."

Monday, April 22, 2013

The U.S. Senate’s anti-democratic filibuster rule prevented a majority of senators from passing even a watered-down bill to reduce the odds of future mass murders. Great work, guys and gals: Let’s hear it for the Second Amendment rights of felons and whack jobs to buy guns over the internet and at gun shows! Ninety percent of the American public was on board – but hey, a minority of senators knew better than to heed the will of the people. Where in the constitution does it say the Senate needs 60 votes to pass a bill?
Paranoid Second Amendment fundamentalists poisoned the nation’s gun safety debate, serving up heaping helpings of hysteria and prevarication. They seem to forget their hallowed text includes the term “well-regulated.”

Nothing is more ridiculous than media professionals in high dudgeon and complete ignorance. The Patriot-News KNOWS that it was the EVIL conservatives who thwarted the will of the majority.

A word, first, about that Senate "minority." Majority Leader Harry Reid was free to bring the deal struck by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey to the floor for an up-or-down vote, and this background-checks amendment might have passed. It did convince 54 Senators, including four Republicans.
But under Senate rules, a simple majority vote would have opened the measure to up to 30 hours of debate, which would have meant inspecting the details. The White House demanded, and Mr. Reid agreed, that Congress should try to pass the amendment without such a debate.
Majority rules would have also opened the bill to pro-gun amendments that were likely to pass. That would have boxed Mr. Reid into the embarrassing spectacle of having to later scotch a final bill because it also contained provisions that the White House loathes. So Mr. Reid moved under "unanimous consent" to allow nine amendments, each with a 60-vote threshold.

Yet this combination of animus and overreach explains why the post-Newtown gun debate has been such a lost opportunity.
The President might have forged a compromise from the political center out that reduced gun violence at the margins while respecting Second Amendment rights. Instead, liberals cleaned out their ideological cupboards in favor of gun restrictions that would have little practical effect but would have notched a symbolic victory over the National Rifle Association and those benighted rubes in the provinces. By so overreaching, Mr. Obama couldn't even steamroll moderate members of his own party.

Friday, April 19, 2013

The media here documents its own sick-making bias and arrogance but instead of understanding their own words -- we ignored the destruction of an entire town to focus only on the minor heartburn suffered by our Liberal Messiah -- they use it as a bludgeon for criticizing Fox.

So, one morning show was home to two unabashed, unofficial lobbyists for gun control, and they spent the entire morning lecturing those who had not voted for their favored legislation, with furrowed brows, calling one party “extinct” despite the glaringly obvious political fact that most of 2014′s competitive Senate elections take place in pro-gun territories. The other morning show “focused instead on news about a Texas fertilizer plant explosion.”
Which explosion was that? The massive fertilizer plant explosion that rocked an entire region, with casualties feared in the high double digits and injuries to over 150? The explosion that happened just hours before the broadcast and featured dramatic live and viral video from the scene? The one that sent shock waves 45 miles across the state of Texas and a chill down the backs of citizens too often besieged by fiery, unexpected tragedies this week? The one that was an ongoing threat to surrounding areas because of the highly flammable nature of fertilizer, had not been definitively deemed an accident, and had ATF agents heading down to its location just north of Waco, Texas? That explosion? Because I’m pretty comfortable with that editorial decision.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

But Paul has indulged in a fallacy. The Facebook Generation’s alleged “leave us alone” attitude towards government can explain why its members did not embrace (okay, let’s name names) John McCain. It can conceivably explain why they did not embrace Mitt Romney. But it cannot explain the enthusiasm of the Face Generation for Barack Obama, particularly after Obama had spent four years demonstrating that he has no intention of letting anyone alone.
Portions of the Facebook Generation may talk a good self-reliance game. But the voting pattern of this cohort as a whole isn’t promising. Instead, it suggests that they like “free stuff” at least as much as their parents do.

For me, the idea that a Paulist Republican Party could attract enough young voters to offset the destruction of its traditional stool is laughable. Paul’s blue print would make for a great Third Party, but comes nowhere close to charting the course for a Republican resurgence

Libertarians think they can get a Victorian-sized state without Victorian attitudes, but they’re deluded. If you really want a small state that doesn’t tell you what to do and gobble up half your income then start going to church, get involved in voluntary activities, tell the vicar or priest to stop droning on about the cuts and climate change and tell him to start shouting about sin and fornication. Repress yourself, you’ll find it’s good for your wallet.
Were that to happen, then the need for an enormous state apparatus managing vast areas of our life would be reduced.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The NFL forever lost part of its voice on Tuesday, as Pat Summerall passed away at the age of 82. The lead Sunday play-by-play man for CBS and later FOX, Summerall built a legacy that included a record 16 Super Bowls behind the mic and a part of perhaps sports’ greatest broadcasting duo. Along with longtime partner John Madden and NFL Films’ John Facenda, Summerall will be remembered as one of the three voices most associated with professional football.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

While these attacks are thankfully rare, I can’t for the life of me figure out why. The Boston Marathon and the Super Bowl are comparatively easy to secure, because they’re one-offs, generate sufficient revenue to make a security investment reasonable, and obvious targets. It’s simply impossible to protect all of our schools, shopping malls, movie theaters, airports, and other places where hundreds and even thousands of people gather on a daily basis.

This credits government action in preventing crazies from getting the necessary materials rather than a lack of crazies. And that’s a completely plausible explanation for a relative decline in these attempts since 9/11 and OKC. But it’s noteworthy that, even before those attacks, they were pretty rare. Which leads me to think that there just aren’t that many people who simultaneously harbor a strong desire to kill large numbers of their fellow man and possess the skills to actually carry out the act.

Joyner, I think, gets to the heart of the issue here:

Unless you’re awfully good at it–in which case your results can be spectacular–you’re less likely to kill a lot of people with explosives than with a surprise gun attack.

The difference between the typical surprise gun attack and the perpetrator in Boston, is that the typical rampage killer dies in his attack while the bomber in yesterday's attack clearly wanted to live. So i would extend Joyner's point and say that in America we fortunate because there are very few people who simultaneously harbor a strong desire to kill large numbers of their fellow man and possess the skills to actually carry out the act AND ARE WILLING TO DIE IN ORDER TO KILL.

And thankfully, there are not nearly as many lunatics as there are schools, or malls, or even marathons. That's why most of our public spaces are safe from mad bombers--and I'm glad to say, why they will remain so.

And then ask yourself, “Why did it take more than two months after the murder of Mark Haase for officials to arrest Eric Williams? Why was Williams left free for 10 weeks – during which Mike and Cynthia McLelland were also murdered — while investigators reportedly chased a wild-goose theory about the Aryan Brotherhood?”
On Jan. 31, the day after Haase was killed, Mark Potok posted a 1,300-word article entitled, “Texas Prosecutor ‘Involved’ in Aryan Brotherhood Investigation is Slain.” And on April 1, the Monday after the McLellands were murdered, Potok appeared on Martin Bashir’s MSNBC show:

Friday, April 12, 2013

Note that Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a dirty word got a lot of coverage by this reporter, but this story is just a "local crime story."
Like Newtown was. But then Newtown had "national ramifications" for legislation... that the media desired. This story also has national ramifications for legislation... that the media does not desire.

But gosh darn it, can you think of any policy implications to this, uh, “local crime” story? And that’s all it is. Just like a bunch of other local stories the Washington Post also refuses to cover — local crimes such as the killing of Trayvon Martin and the killing of Matthew Shepard and the killing of students at an elementary school in Connecticut. Did the Washington Post even think of covering those local crime stories? No! Oh wait, they did? Like, all the time? Hmm. That’s weird. But did they cover them in terms of policy implications? Asking politicians for their views and such? Oh they did that, too? Hmm. So weird. Oh, and Sarah Kliff herself wrote one of those stories? Well, gosh, I’m so confused.

There is a simpler potential reason for the blackout, and it may be the real reason: if people get outraged about this, they may start thinking to themselves: hey, how is this different from the guy killing the baby inside the womb instead of outside? Does that mean maybe I oppose abortion — or at least late-term abortion?
And we can’t have that!

One lesson to be learned is, DO NOT LOSE if you are in the dictator business. The US will borrow money to furnish the Brits, French, and Italians with the means to kill you. Understand that, and be sure that you have the means for defending yourself. The more strategic your country the more important it will be to have defenses including personal defenses. Another lesson is, do not renounce your nukes. Get some. Get at least one and let it be known that it will detonate if you don’t talk to it at daily intervals.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Leftist charges that someone is aping the late Wisconsin senator, who died in 1957, is a recurring accusation in American politics. The charge of "McCarthyism!" is the left-wingers' favorite tactic for silencing anyone with the temerity to express views they consider anathema. Leftists, however, often practice what they pretend to oppose: reckless, unsubstantiated charges against those they fear, including ad hominem attacks, character assassination, and guilt-by-association.

There is something disconcerting about a private organization spending years monitoring someone who had never committed a serious crime, and something equally disconcerting about trying to connect a rock band to a murder rampage, no matter how racist or otherwise unappetizing the band’s lyrics might have been. Furthermore, it is odd that an organization that characterizes itself as being devoted to civil rights—a phrase that connotes the struggles of individuals to assert their rights against a tyrannical government—devotes its energies to tracking the activities of people who are insufficiently respectful of the government: Obama-loathers, opponents of gun control, politically incorrect metalheads, grandmothers who stash canned goods in their basements because they are certain that the government is about to suspend the Constitution and that anarchy will ensue. Don’t such stances, as long as they fall short of directly inciting violence, fall under the First Amendment’s free-speech protections? When I posed this question to Potok, he replied: “When we list these groups, we’re not predicting that they’ll commit violence. We say very explicitly that we’re listing them solely on the basis of their ideology. We’re foursquare behind the First Amendment. We believe these people can say all these things, but we’re going to call them out. We have never suggested restricting any kind of free speech.”

True confession time. I have no idea what McCarthyism is.
Not the Man and the Era. That i understand. I've read the biographies and the histories. The "Ism", though, that is a problem. It is ill-defined: a buzzword for political attacks instead of a term with concrete meaning. Often it is just short hand for "stuff i don't like."
One reason for my confusion is the hypocritical ambivalence that anti-McCarthyites display toward McCarthy's tactics. When Joe does it, it is evidence of his wanton depravity. When others do it, however, the tactics often pass without condemnation. Almost never are they described as harbingers of a new dark age.

Another component of the "Red Scare hysteria" was the activity of private watchdog groups that tracked and publicized the activities of communists and fellow-travelers. Public exposure frequently resulted in lost jobs, etc.
Conventional wisdom holds that there are two reasons why this public witch-hunting was a bad idea. 1. People should not lose their jobs simply because they held unpopular political beliefs. 2. The private watchdogs frequently tarnished innocent people through guilt by association.
Let's say we accept the conventional wisdom: private sector watchdogs were harmful to civic life and are a stain on our history.
Well, then, what should we make of the Southern Poverty Law Center? They are quick to engage in tactics favored by the red hunters-- guilt by association, name-calling in lieu of rational argument , hyping threats to raise money. Their targets, like many targets of HUAC, have no role in government.
Why, then, is the SPCL treated as a reliable source by the MSM? If the McCarthy-era was so bad, why repeat its methods today?

Nutter is entitled to his opinion. What the mayor is not entitled to do is go after others for expressing theirs. In February, The Weekly Standard published “The Sensitivity Apparat,” chronicling the chilling growth and activism of state and local “human rights” or “civil rights” commissions around the country, which have been imposing fines and threatening ordinary citizens for such crimes as expressing Christian moral views or publicly making jokes about politicians. With that in mind, here is the conclusion to Nutter’s letter:

I therefore request that the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations . . . consider specifically whether Philadelphia magazine and the writer, Bob Huber, are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potentially inflammatory effect and the reckless endangerment to Philadelphia’s racial relations possibly caused by the essay’s unsubstantiated assertions.

She changed us all. We went from being a people who saw ourselves as eternally on the downward slide to a nation that was proud to be British again. On the world stage too, she made Britain count once more. She was a startling presence who brought a strong and controversial style to our diplomacy after years of Foreign Office blandness.

So we have here the spectacle of a Democratic Congresswoman authoring legislation on a subject where she literally has no idea what she is talking about. She has no idea what a magazine is, or how it works; and yet she has introduced a law that would ban most of the many millions of magazines that are now in use. Is this a rare occurrence? I don’t think so:

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"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams